G7 summit: Analyst expects China to top agenda

U.S. President Donald Trump and other leaders from some of the world's richest nations will meet in the French town of Evian-les-Bains on Lake Geneva from June 15-17 for the Group of Seven summit.

On paper, it appears global security issues – the Middle-East, Ukraine – and access to critical resources will top this year's agenda.

But Cédric Dupont, an international relations professor at Geneva Graduate Institute, expects Trump will test the willingness of partners to back the United States in its long-term competition with China.

"His agenda is to counter China. He's not so much interested in Russia to some extent but how can he counter China and remain the dominant player," Dupont told the Associated Press.

But China’s exclusion from the informal club's summits looks odd, given its now immense sway over the world's economic well-being and affairs.

Its economy, swollen by decades of growth since Mao's death in 1976, now dwarfs those of G7 nations Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Canada — leaving only the United States to catch.

China’s clout impacts all G7 countries, in myriad ways.

It sells far more goods than it buys, announcing a record trade surplus of almost $1.2 trillion in 2025, which is a source of friction with other industrial powers.

It controls supplies of crucial rare minerals. Its technological advances and growing military strength are giving rivals cold sweats.

And it is the world’s biggest emitter of climate-warming pollution.

All this means that China will be an elephant in the room at the Monday-to-Wednesday summit in the Alpine spa town of Evian-les-Bains.

As host, French President Emmanuel Macron has carved out time for the leaders to talk about how to rebalance trade with China, amid fears that soaring Chinese exports of cars and other products could wreck G7 industries.

The chemistry between Trump and other G7 leaders has been bad of late — over the Iran war and other bones of contention — but China could be an issue that unites them, said Cédric Dupont, who specializes in international politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute.

"The hidden agenda is to try to, how to work, to govern the world, short of China,” he said.